The Morning Wrap: India Calls Germany For Mega Govt-To-Govt Defence Deal; Many Indian Papers Exist Only On Paper

Indian employees of the Mazgaon ship building yard gather around the first Scorpene submarine before it is floated for sea trials in Mumbai on April 6, 2015. The submarine is due for induction into the Indian naval fleet in September 2016. AFP PHOTO/STR (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)

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The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.

Essential HuffPost

On a day Narendra Modi criticized Sonia Gandhi for being an “extra constitutional authority” during the UPA regime and former PM Manmohan Singh accused the BJP of “repackaging UPA schemes,” both met each other at Modi’s residence and presumably, amicably enough for Modi to describe the meeting as “great” on his Twitter account.

SBI Chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, ICICI bank head Chanda Kochhar, Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and HT Media Chair Shobhana Bhartia are among the world’s 100 most powerful women, according to the Forbes’ annual power list, that saw German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the helm.

Several Bollywood stories are accused of flimsy plots and storylines but—in a twist on this idea-- Mumbai-based Preeti Vangani's #WhatsappMovieReel distils Bollywood classics such as DDLJ into a single conversation short enough to fit inside a WhatsApp window.

Main News

Following a deal with French aerospace company Rafale earlier this year to buy some aircraft bypassing the traditional procurement process, India has now sounded out Germany for a direct government-to-government arrangement to buy six submarines, that is also said to be New Delhi's costliest military acquisitions programme.

The world's most popular sport was plunged into turmoil today as seven powerful soccer figures were arrested on US and Swiss authorities on charges of corruption and impropriety in the awarding of World Cup 2018 and 2022.

India on Wednesday denied that it had asked the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) to retract portions of its interview with President Pranab Mukherjee where he had refered to the Bofors issue, as a mere “media trial,” because it could affect the state visit of the President.

The death toll due to the intense heat wave sweeping across many parts of the country continued to mount and reached 1,412 on Wednesday, with only Andhra Pradesh and Telangana accounting for 1,360 deaths.

The Hindureports on an investigation that has found several newspapers which exist only on paper. Many of them, it emerges, were publishing the same content week after week and only existed to corner government advertisements.

The Union ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) and the income tax (I-T) department have begun separate probes into the books of United Spirits Ltd (USL), following an admission by the company that huge sums of money were diverted from the company to other United Breweries (UB) group entities under the previous management led by Chairman Vijay Mallya.

Off The Front Page

Mamata Banerjee has directed civil servants in West Bengal to set up office in their residences to clear files and improve service delivery to citizens.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and education minister Smriti Irani were engaged in a verbal duel with Smriti Irani, over the setting up of a technical institute in Gandhi bastion Amethi.

Romeo Fernandes, the first Indian footballer picked to play in the coveted Brazilian league has been released by his club after spending just 21 minutes on the field, his manager said on Wednesday.

Opinion

Meeta Rajivlochan, The Indian Express, says the civil service must work on ways to include officers with specialized expertise in sub-fields.

Sanjaya Baru says in The Hindu that the Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana should be “less obsessed with building/rebuilding their respective State capitals, suppress their individual egos and focus on their State’s overall development.”